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MASS
MEDIA AND ELECTIONS:
Estonian and Lithuanian Experience
In Lithuania, the procedures of elections and the rules
of providing electoral information to the mass media are
regulated by the following laws: the Law on
Elections to the Seimas, the Law on Presidential
Elections, the Law on Elections to the Local Authorities,
and the Law on Referendum.
The Central Electoral Committee (“CEC”) carried
out all the elections and referendums in Lithuania.
The CEC, which is formed before the elections or on the
occasion of referendum, is a permanent body that
organizes and supervises the work of local election
committees.
All electoral laws of Lithuania contain basically the
same provisions as to the activities of mass media during
elections. The laws state that meetings and voting
of electoral committees shall be open. Persons
present in the meeting hall may transcribe or record the
proceedings by audio or visual means. Live
broadcasting, however, is allowed only upon permission by
the electoral committee chairman.
During the election campaign, the candidates for the
Seimas, the office of the President, or the local
authority are granted free of charge the right to use the
media of the state and local authority. The CEC
shall, upon coordination with the heads of radio and
television, establish the actual duration and time on
public radio and television channels or that of local
authority radio and television programs allocated for the
campaigning and distribute in such a manner that preserve
the principles of equality among candidates.
Campaigning in commercial mass media is restricted only
by the size of special election accounts. The
candidates may draw money to pay for airtime or newspaper
space only from these accounts, which are opened for
election period. The electoral laws limit the
amount of money that a candidate or a political party may
spend on campaigning. After the proclamation of the
final election results, the candidates and political
parties shall provide the CEC with reports concerning the
sources of funds and the utilization of these funds for
campaigning. The CEC is obliged to publish these
reports in the press.
The laws also provide for the rules of publicizing
material discrediting a candidate for Seimas, the office
of the President, or the local authority. The media
having publicized such material are required to provide
the candidate with an opportunity to express a countering
opinion.
The Law on Elections to the Seimas and the Law on
Elections to the Local Authorities also define the
concept of compromising material and provide for the
details of the procedure of publicizing the
candidate’s countering opinion.
If the means of mass media did not publicize the
countering opinion when it was required to do so, the
candidate’s countering opinion shall, by the
decision of the CEC, be broadcast on public radio or
television and be paid for at the same advertisement
rate. In such cases, the means of mass media must
pay the CEC two or three times (depending on further
circumstances) the amount of broadcast cost.
Discrediting material is defined as material that is
aimed to influence voters not to vote for an individual
candidate and that contains information describing the
candidate in negative terms. However, a negative
opinion about the candidate publicized in mass media
(unlike information, the criteria of truth is not applied
to an opinion) shall not be considered to be discrediting
material and shall not entitle the candidate to demand
publication of a countering opinion.
Campaigning is prohibited thirty hours prior to the
commencement of elections and on the day of elections,
with the exception of permanent visual campaign material
in the places intended therefor, provided that it was
displayed at least forty-eight hours prior to the
beginning of elections.
Anyone is prohibited from abusing his or her official
position in state or local authority institutions,
offices, or organizations, as well as in the state or
local authority mass media when carrying out an election
campaign. The election observers and
representatives of the mass media may participate in
calculating votes in electoral districts and areas and in
establishing election results in electoral areas.
Representatives of the mass media are prohibited from
disseminating information about voting results until the
report of the CEC is published. The CEC must
immediately prepare the report for mass media upon the
receipt of preliminary data from electoral committees of
electoral areas.
The only area in Estonian media that is strictly
regulated during the election campaign is Public
Broadcast (ETV). The Law on Broadcasting (1994)
says that the Broadcast Council, the body over the
Estonian Television and Estonian Radio, must comply with
the rules for the election campaign in stations.
The rules were in force during the elections and impose
the principles of equality and impartiality in the
coverage of election campaign on ETV. The rules
also regulate the amount and price of advertising.
According to the rules, special air time slots are
allocated to the candidates and are free of charge.
There is no special election regulation for private
media, both print and audiovisual. Political
advertising is allowed. The Law on Broadcasting
regulates only sponsorship; it is prohibited to use
sponsors for the news, current affairs, and political
programs. Nevertheless, two private stations
transmitted paid programs during the 1995
elections. In the past, newspapers published a
large amount of paid materials, which were very often
intermingled with editorial materials.
The absence of regulation of private media creates
certain problems. This year, dissatisfied groups
staged public protests, and some leading journalists, who
claimed that the rules governing election finance are
inadequate, staged demonstrations before the beginning of
the election campaign in February. Estonian
newspaper association proclaimed that “there was no
point in casting a vote if one does not know who is
financing the campaign.” According to the law,
parties are required to declare their sponsors and
amounts of money received, but apparently one “can
write anything on this declaration. Some of these
lists read like fairy tales.”
Aldas Kazlauskas & Marius Lukosiunas
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